The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects

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karl 12 39

Free E-book and one of the 'essential reads' when it comes to the UFO subject -whatever your position.

This is Edward J. Ruppelt's memoir of his role in the seminal US Air Force UFO study projects: Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book. According to this account, he coined the acronym 'UFO' and put many of the official procedures for reporting and studying UFOs in place. An enjoyable read, this book captures the feel of working for the mid-20th century US military. He describes the changing attitudes of the USAF about UFOs during the early 1950s: wobbling between denial, ridicule, paranoia, and genuine inquiry.

A key point of this book is to resolve doubts about the military's role. Ruppelt makes a strong case that UFOs weren't a top secret weapons system; the reports were not disinformation by intelligence agencies; nor was there a concerted effort to cover up UFOs by the US government. Ruppelt does recount many times when the brass tried to dismiss reports without investigating them sufficiently. However, this comes across as simply standard-issue military 'cover-your-ass' behavior, not a vast conspiracy.

He gives unique details on some of the most impressive sightings on his watch. These were largely witnessed by highly trained observers such as radar operators, fighter and commercial pilots, astronomers, and other scientists, often during the course of their official duties. The Air Force group that Ruppelt worked for had access to data on top secret balloon launches and test flights, so they were able to sort out which reports could be explained in this way. He consulted with a wide range of scientific specialists, many of whom were in favor of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, and some who were skeptics.

Fully a quarter of the reports were still unexplained after this rigorous filtering. Ruppelt is decidedly agnostic, but open-minded, about the reality behind the 'unexplained' sightings.

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karl 12 39

Some of the more interesting statements made by Captain Edward J Ruppelt throughout his career:

"Of these UFO reports,the radar/visual reports are the most convincing.

When a ground radar picks up a UFO target and a ground observer sees a light where the radar target is located,then a jet interceptor is scrambled to intercept the UFO and the pilot also sees the lights and gets a radar lock only to have the UFO almost impudently outdistance him,there is no simple answer."

Captain Edward J Ruppelt - Chief of Project Bluebook.

After the Fort Monmouth, NJ, radar sightings (which started on Sept 10, 1951), the Air Force held a meeting at the Pentagon. General Cabell presided over the meeting, and it was attended by his entire staff plus Lieutenant Cummings, Lieutenant Colonel Rosengarten, and a special representative from Republic Aircraft Corporation. The man from Republic supposedly represented a group of top U.S. industrialists and scientists who thought that there should be a lot more sensible answers coming from the Air Force regarding UFOs.

"Every word of the two-hour meeting was recorded on a wire recorder. The recording was so hot that it was later destroyed, but not before I had heard it several times......it didn't exactly follow the tone of the official Air Force releases--many of the people present at the meeting weren't as convinced that the 'hoax, hallucination, and misidentification' answer was quite as positive as the Grudge Report and subsequent press releases made out."

Captain Edward J Ruppelt - Chief of Project Bluebook.

"Every time I get skeptical, I think of the other reports made by experienced pilots and radar operators, scientists, and other people who know what they are looking at. These reports were thoroughly investigated and they are still unknowns.

We have no aircraft on this earth that can at will so handily outdistance our latest jets... The pilots, radar specialists, generals, industrialists, scientists, and the man on the street who have told me, I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't seen it myself, knew what they were talking about. Maybe the Earth is being visited by interplanetary space ships.

When four college professors, a geologist, a chemist, a physicist, and a petroleum engineer report seeing the same UFOs on fourteen different occasions, the event can be classified as, at least, unusual. Add the fact that hundreds of other people saw these UFOs and that they were photographed, and the story gets even better. Add a few more facts, that these UFOs were picked up on radar and that a few people got a close look at one of them, and the story begins to convince even the most ardent skeptic."

Captain Edward J. Ruppelt

Chief of Project Blue Book, from his book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, 1956.

"The one thing about these briefings that never failed to amaze me, although it happened time and time again, was the interest in UFOs within scientific circles. As soon as the word spread that Project Blue Book was giving official briefings to groups with the proper security clearances, we had no trouble in getting scientists to swap free advice for a briefing. I might add that we briefed only groups who were engaged in government work and who had the proper security clearances solely because we could discuss any government project that might be of help to us in pinning down the UFO. Our briefings weren't just squeezed in either; in many instances we would arrive at a place to find that a whole day had been set aside to talk about UFOs. And never once did I meet anyone who laughed off the whole subject of flying saucers even though publicly these same people had jovially sloughed off the press with answers of 'hallucinations,' 'absurd', or 'a waste of time and money.' They weren't wild-eyed fans but they were certainly interested."

Captain Edward J Ruppelt - Chief of Project Bluebook.

"...and it was up to them to tell us if they (UFOs) were real---some type of vehicle flying through our atmosphere. If they were real,then they would have to be spacecraft because no one at the meeting gave a second thought to the possibility that the UFOs might be a super secret U.S. aircraft or a Soviet development. The scientists knew everything that was going on in the U.S. and they knew that no country in the world had developed their technology far enough to build such a craft that would perform as the UFOs were reported to do."

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karl 12 39

A synthesis is presented of data concerning Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) reported during the past 20 years through governmental, press and private channels. The serious evidence is clarified and analyzed. The data are reported by categories of specially trained observers and studied by patterns of appearance, performance and periodic recurrence.

During the process of selecting the most reliable and significant reports, emphasis was placed on the qualifications of the observer and on cases involving two or more observers. This resulted in 740 reports being selected, after consideration of over 5000 signed reports and many hundreds of reports from newspapers and other publications.

An overall look is taken at the UFO problem: The historical development of the mystery, Congressional attitudes and activity, consideration of the problems and dangers involved, and discussion of what is needed in the way of organized scientific research.

Evidence is presented in support of the hypothesis that UFOs are under intelligent control, making plausible the notion that some of them might be of extraterrestrial origin.

This was one of the first books published about the UFO phenomena. We are fortunate that it ended up in the public domain.

It is a template for much of what would follow: the paranoia, the government disinformation, the inescapable conclusion that the saucers are not of this earth. Keyhoe, with his spare, matter of fact writing style, which also conveys a profound sense of wonder, has to be the prototype for the deadpan Fox Mulder of the X-Files.

On one hand we can see the birth of a key modern mythology. On the other, there is a body of almost naive evidence in this text unpolluted by that very mythology. The case studies are real. The witnesses were highly reliable. These cases are still unexplained.

Leonard Stringfield was born in 1920. He was director of CRIFO (Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects) - one of the world's largest research groups during the mid-5Os and publisher of its newsletter, ORBIT (1953-1957). He also worked in cooperation with the United States Air Force (1953-1957), investigating and reporting UFO activity, having been assigned a special code number to report by phone to the Air Defense Command in Columbus, Ohio. For over 30 years Stringfield served in several of the major UFO Organizations in a public relations capacity. From 1957 to 1970, he was public relations adviser with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. Later on it was director of public relations and board member of the Mutual UFO Network. He was also regional investigator for the Center for UFO Studies directed by Dr. J. Allen Hynek.

Stringfield was also advisor to Sir Eric Gairy, former Prime Minister of Grenada, 1977-78, during his efforts to establish a UFO research agency within the framework of the United Nations. He passed away in 1994.

Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects -Committee on Science and Astronautics - US House of Representatives,1968.

"Today the House Committee on Science and Astronautics conducts a very special session, a symposium on the subject of unidentified flying objects; the name of which is a reminder to us of our ignorance on this subject and a challenge to acquire more knowledge thereof. We approach the question of unidentified flying objects as purely a scientific problem, one of unanswered questions. Certainly the rigid and exacting discipline of science should be marshaled to explore the nature of phenomena which reliable citizens continue to report"

UFOs: A NEW LOOK - A Special Report by the The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP)

"One of the most significant developments since 1964 has been the increasing concern over the UFO problem demonstrated by professional scientists and engineers. The growing involvement of scientists insisting on a careful review of the evidence decreases the likelihood that the problem could or would be buried or glossed over in the future before a proper evaluation is made".

I just wanted to underline one point that Dr. Baker made. Congressman Roush, in his detailed presentation of the various Air Force systems, I am afraid that the main point won't come across to a lay audience, and that is that with relatively little expenditure of funds, it would be possible to significantly improve the available information.

Apparently what is now happening is that the Air Force surveillance radar is throwing away the data that is of relevance for this inquiry. In other words, if it sees something that is not on a ballistic trajectory, or not in orbit, it ignores it, it throws it in the garbage.

Well, that garbage is just the area of our interest. So if some method could be devised by the Air Force to save the output that they are throwing away from these space surveillance radars, it might be the least expensive way to significantly improve our information about these phenomena.

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karl 12 39

New Year's Eve 1982 marked the beginning of one of the most puzzling UFO cases in recent times: the Hudson Valley "siege." The siege begot over 7,000 sightings of a boomerang-shaped craft or crafts moving silently through the sky over New York and Connecticut between 1982 and 1995. Night Siege is the collaborative effort of Hynek, Imbrogno, and Pratt to report the data gathered from witnesses of this mystifying experience, without speculation of what it might be..

'Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds' by Dr Jacques Vallee:

Over two decades ago, eminent scientist Vallee wrote a provocative book about alleged UFO landings, folklore, and certain unexplained phenomena. That long-out-of-print book--which discussed the most interesting reports of more than 1,000 apparently reliable witnessess--has become an underground classic

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TheMcGuffin 68

Ruppelt's book is a good place to start, since he had a lot of the inside story on UFOs that we would never have known otherwise, including the fact that many senior officers in the Air Force and other agencies had concluded that some UFOs were interplantary. This was in the 1940s and 1950s, and even now we still don't have access to all the information they had back then.

Accounts of phenomena popularly referred to as "flying saucers,” more dignifiedly labeled "unidentified flying objects" or UFOs, con­tinue to persist in the world news. The reports of these strange phenomena of the skies have been attracting public attention for thirteen years and there is apparently no let-up in sight. Although within a given region on earth long lulls between sightings have been noted, during such local lulls, other parts of the world have witnessed extra concentrations of sightings.

Three years ago, in a book entitled The Flying Saucers Are Real, I reported the results of my first investigation into this world-wide mystery. At that time I stated my belief that the U.S. Air Force knew the answer and was hiding it from the public.

Since July, 1952, in a new investigation of the saucers, I have been privileged to cooperate with the Air Force. Because of my present understanding of their very serious problem, and certain dangers inherent in the situation, I have been given information unknown to most Americans.

Scores of impressive sighting reports by service pilots have been cleared for me, with the conclusions of Air Technical Intelligence—some so incredible they would have been ridiculed two or three years ago.

As a result of this close association, this book reveals, I believe, all that the Air Force has learned about the flying saucers. It also explains the contradictions that have come, from time to time, from various Defense officials, as well as the reasons for official silence.

The Mantell Incident: An Anatomy of an Investigation, is more than a diary of what happened each day. It includes transcripts of discovered documents and "lost" press releases, as well as actual copies of important documents. The report includes analyses by numerous researchers of specific issues. The Report would not be complete without the analytical expertise of independent researcher, Brad Sparks, who wrote the very detailed analysis based on all the evidence collected.

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karl 12 39

In Dimensions, the first volume of a trilogy, Dr. Jacques Vallee reexamines the historical record that led to the modern UFO phenomenon and to the belief in alien contact. He then tackles the enigma of abduction reports, which come from various times and various countries, as well as the psychic and spiritual components of the contact experience. In the last portion of the book, he notes the factors that inhibit research into the phenomenon – the triple coverup and political motivations – and concludes that the extraterrestrial theory is simply not strange enough to explain the facts.

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psyche101 19,777

Nice work Karl, thank you very much. I have added what I could from Google to my To Read List, and I cannot thank you enough for the pdf versions. I have been chasing Passport by Vallee for a while now. I will load these up on the tablet. Cannot always get net, so the PDF's are a gem, again, thank you. I very much appreciate the effort you have put in here. I got 5 PDF books from this. That is just awesome. Legendary stuff mate. Best I finish of Kean's book this weekend if I can.

Cheers.

Edited January 11, 2012 by psyche101

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karl 12 39

Hey Psyche, no probs mate and happy reading -I found the NICAP UFO Evidence report to be quite a fascinating one and there are some other good pdf files at the link below if you've not seen them already.

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karl 12 39

Hazzard, there sure is - this other book is from 1923 but also contains some intriguing UFO reports, the author's writing style is a bit dated but it suggests that UFOs were being seen way back before the 1940s.

New Lands by Charles Fort

As in his other books, many of the phenomena here are straight-on UFO reports. Fort gives numerous instances of 'airship' sightings, some with multiple attestations over wide regions. Many of the sightings occurred decades before humans attained heavier-than-air flight. What is striking to modern readers is the language used by the authorities to explain these sightings: bright stars, luminescent gas, mirages, ball lightning, and mass hysteria...and, just prior to WWI, reports of mysterious cylinders over south England were attributed to the Germans. So not only have there been mysterious lights in the sky long before the initial UFO flap in the late 1940s, the powers that be have likewise attempted to dismiss these reports in similar terms for a long time...

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karl 12 39

Hey Psyche, many thanks for the Fort pdf link -don´t know if you´ve read this one by Jaques Vallee but it realy has got some interesting content..

Forbidden science: journals, 1957-1969 By Jacques Vallee:

Known principally as an investigator of the UFO phenomenon ( Dimensions ) and a science fiction novelist, the French-born Vallee (now a resident of the U.S.) has also worked as a computer scientist in both academia and industry. Ufologists will not find the answers to all of their questions here, for although Vallee believes that UFOs exist, he has no idea just what they are. Therein lies the excellence of his dazzling diary: it offers a glimpse into the mind of a scientist who seems to challenge every preconception and established piety. To his academic training as a mathematician and scientist, which stressed rational approaches to problems, Vallee has brought an interest in the mystical, the psychical, the paranormal.

"Governments took notice, organizing task forces, encouraging secret briefings and study groups, funding classified research and all the time denying before the public that any of the phenomena might be real. The major revelation of these Diaries may be the demonstration of how the scientific community was misled by the government, how the best data were kept hidden, and how the public record was shamelessly manipulated."

Dr. Jacques Vallee, astrophysicist, computer scientist 1992

Cheers.

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karl 12 39

Swamp Gas Times is a revealing memoir by a journalist who has covered the UFO field for more than twenty years. This honest, behind the scenes look at how the media handle UFO stories also examines the dramatic events and major players that have transformed the UFO research in the past quarter century. In a series of commentaries and updates to articles written for the New York Times, Omni, Science Digest, Newsweek, and elsewhere.

Richard M. Dolan is a gifted historian whose study of U.S. Cold War strategy led him to the broader context of increased security measures and secrecy since World War II. One aspect of such government policies that has continued to hold the public's imagination for over half a century is the question of unidentified flying objects.

UFOs and the National Security State is the first volume of a two-part detailed chronological narrative of the national security dimensions of the UFO phenomenon from 1941 to the present. Working from hundreds of declassified records and other primary and secondary sources, Dolan centers his investigation on the American military and intelligence communities, demonstrating that they take UFOs seriously indeed.

'UFO Phenomenon: Fact, Fantasy and Disinformation' by John Michael Greer:

Do UFOs exist? Are the lights and strange craft in our skies aliens from other galaxies-or the product of fraud, delusion, or mistaken identity? John Michael Greer - a respected authority on occult traditions - reveals the secret hidden at the centre of the UFO labyrinth. This meticulously researched guide plunges into the thick of the controversy with an unexpected and compelling approach to the UFO mystery.